The Mustangs advanced to a regional final with West Burlington Notre Dame, which defeated PCM 6-4 on Monday for the right to go to state.

“We can be disappointed in the way we played tonight, but not disappointed in the season,” Interstate 35 head coach Tim Bogs said. “We had a pretty good season.”

The Roadrunners finished the season with a mark of 22-4.

PCM had runners in scoring position in each inning, scoring in all but the second and third innings.

Interstate 35, meanwhile, only advanced runners into scoring position in the fifth and seventh innings. The Roadrunners loaded in the fifth inning with one out, but failed to score. They also had the bases loaded in the seventh inning, but a double play on a lineout double play.

“They hit the ball a lot better than we thought,” Bogs said. “You could tell we were on the ropes all night long. We’ve got to do a little bit better job of keeping people off base and getting ahead in the count.”

Interstate 35 scored its only run of the game in the seventh inning, when freshman Slye Richardson led the inning off with a solo home run to left field.

But PCM pitcher Racheal Freland didn’t allow many other opportunities for Interstate 35.

Freland surrendered just six hits in the game.

“We knew it was a small strike zone,” Bogs said. “We’ve had him (umpire) before. We talked all week long about you have to be patient. We were ahead in the count the first three innings. It’s a 2-0 count, and we’re swinging at a not good pitch. You have to wait and wait. We didn’t do that. We were probably a little too aggressive in the first inning, and that took us out of the game.”

PCM also took advantage of four Interstate 35 errors in the game.

It was a disappointing end to the season for a Roadrunner team that advanced to the regional final last year and had won the Pride of Iowa Conference this season.

Still, with seven freshmen in the starting lineup, there’s plenty to be excited about in the future for the Roadrunners.

But that youth was on display on Friday.

“We had a lot of young kids,” Bogs said. “You could tell tonight that kind of hurt us. They hadn’t really been pressed like that since the first weekend with Winterset. They started hitting the ball and we didn’t have too many answers for it.”

Three Roadrunners played their final game for Interstate 35. Seniors on the team were Brooke Brommel, Brittany Mease and Jenna Sandquist.

All three played as eighth graders and all three were a part of more than 100 wins in their careers.

“They were a lot of fun,” Bogs said about his seniors. “They were good leaders and they were really good kids. I’m really proud of them.”